Analysis of Behold! I am not one that goes to Lectures…

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 1863 (Bodmin, Cornwall) – 1944 (Cornwall)



Behold! I am not one that goes to Lectures or the pow-wow of
Professors.
The elementary laws never apologise: neither do I apologise.
I find letters from the Dean dropt on my table—and every one is
signed by the Dean's name—
And I leave them where they are; for I know that as long as I
stay up
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
I am one who goes to the river,
I sit in the boat and think of 'life' and of 'time.'
How life is much, but time is more; and the beginning is
everything,
But the end is something.
I loll in the Parks, I go to the wicket, I swipe.
I see twenty-two young men from Foster's watching me, and the
trousers of the twenty-two young men,
I see the Balliol men en masse watching me.—The Hottentot
that loves his mother, the untutored Bedowee, the Cave-man
that wears only his certificate of baptism, and the shaggy
Sioux that hangs his testamur with his scalps.
I see the Don who ploughed me in Rudiments watching me: and the
wife of the Don who ploughed me in Rudiments watching me.
I see the rapport of the wicket-keeper and umpire. I cannot see
that I am out.
Oh! you Umpires!
I am not one who greatly cares for experience, soap, bull-dogs,
cautions, majorities, or a graduated Income-Tax,
The certainty of space, punctuation, sexes, institutions,
copiousness, degrees, committees, delicatesse, or the
fetters of rhyme—
For none of these do I care: but least for the fetters of rhyme.
Myself only I sing. Me Imperturbe! Me Prononce!
Me progressive and the depth of me progressive,
And the bathos, Anglice bathos
Of me chanting to the Public the song of Simple Enumeration.


Scheme ABBCDEFGGHCIIJKLMNOPKOOMBQRSKHHBTBU
Poetic Form
Metre 0111111111010111 010 0010110110111 111010111110010011 11011 011111111111111 11 10111110010 111111010 110010111011 11111111000101 10 101110 1100111101011 111011111010100 101010111 110111110101 11110011011 11101010011000010 11111111 1101111010010100 11011110100101 110011010100101101 1111 1110 1111110110100111 1001001010011 01001101010010 101010110 1011 111111111101011 110111111 101000111010 00111 11101010011100010
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,603
Words 296
Sentences 20
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 35
Lines Amount 35
Letters per line (avg) 36
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 1,250
Words per stanza (avg) 292
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:29 min read
114

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer who published using the pseudonym Q. more…

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